'Social Events Management Procedures' An EvaluationBy Samuel F. Fisher and Nicholas Desai Because the College does not trust its recognized organizations to monitor independently and satisfactorily their own social events, the College has created a set of rules that organizations wishing to host social events (read: throw parties where alcohol will be present; read: any party worth attending). These paternalistic regulations are known as the Social Event Management Procedures (SEMP), the policies which govern the vast majority of parties attended by Dartmouth students. Were an outsider unfamiliar with Dartmouth’s unique social landscape to read the ten-page set of Byzantine directives outlining the SEMP, he would likely get an impression far from reality. This is because members of organizations responsible for making sure their events follow SEMP policy (Fraternity Social Chairmen for the most part) probably spend as much time, if not more, inventing methods to evade SEMP without getting caught as they do assuring an event’s compliance with SEMP. SEMP’s strictest rules are reserved for social events “open” to the entire campus or those events with over 80 students in attendance. Any event expected to have over 80 students present must register the event with the College administration (and this is an entirely different bureaucratic maze). In addition to those that are registered, any event exceeding the 80-person limit must also abide by the following rules: • No hard alcohol. SEMP allows student organizations to host “closed” social events for those events expected to attract a combination of members and invited guests not to exceed 80. Such events need not be registered (only “notification” is required) but the basic rules apply as with “open” events. No hard liquor, only alcohol listed in the “notification” can be served, and the amount of alcohol at the event is limited to one keg of beer or 150 drinks (which are roughly equal). The major difference, according to SEMP, pertains to the size of the event and the issue of checking IDs at the door. SEMP also has provisions for “members only” events. Such events are limited to the membership of an organization and require no registration or notification. Kegs are not allowed, but hard alcohol is. The newest SEMP category is for “’tails” events. Until recently, the College had yet to realize that it had no way of regulating such events, so it expanded SEMP to include them. Tails events are limited to either the membership of an organization and its invited guests or the membership of two organizations (a fraternity and sorority for example). Alcohol must still be dispensed from single location, hard alcohol is obviously allowed, and kegs are prohibited. According to College policy, there exists a set of social events that do not need to be registered with the administration. These events are: an event in a private room, an event in a common room that does not exceed ten people, an event attended only by members of one organization, and an event with the members of one organization and their invited guests—the sum of which is not to exceed 40. Let us examine two situations where student organizations might laugh in the face of SEMP and manage to evade its smothering tread. These loopholes are quite feasible and demonstrate the absurd disingenuousness that the SEMP policy requires. Exhibit A) Wet Weeknights Fraternities often host events during the week (usually Monday or Wednesday nights) and attempt to attract revelers with promises of some tasty concoction. Two fraternities are known to serve slushy cocktails on certain weeknights, and both events recur over the course of many weeks throughout the term. If attendance at either of these events exceeds 40 (a virtual lock), the hosting organization is supposed to register the event, but because both involve the serving of hard liquor, no registration occurs. These are simply fly-by-night operations, and the hosting organizations rely on their ability to avoid detection in order to stay out of trouble. Let us imagine an imaginary party at a hypothetical fraternity at which a liquor-based beverage is served. The attendance of this always exceeds 80 by a large factor, causing the basement to resemble the lower decks of an slave trading ship. Not only is this event never registered—and registration is a requirement for parties with more than 80 students present—but what can only be described as a pinkish, frothy beverage is the mainstay, which is also explicitly forbidden. Were this fraternity ever to be caught red-handed in such blatant disregard of SEMP, many weeks of social probation would likely be in order. The same thing can be said about any house on campus daring enough to host a similar events featuring punches, liquors, teas, and ’tails. Such egregious violations of SEMP could occur almost ubiquitously across the Greek system. Exhibit B) Friday Fiestas The majority of registered open parties on campus occur on Friday and Saturday nights. Let us consider another hypothetical fraternity. A few times a term this house hosts dance parties open to campus, which are usually well-attended. SEMP violations abound during such parties. The night may begin with a ’tails event—either by invitation or in conjunction with a sorority. Sometimes, alcohol at the ’tails pre-party is centralized at the basement bar; other times, separate drinks are located in private rooms upstairs. If a ’tails event of this variety were to be registered, a centralized location would be permitted, but the separation of different drinks by private room would not. Furthermore, guests are sometimes allowed to mix their own drinks, which is also a SEMP violation. In the event that alcohol were centralized and distributed by a SEMP-trained member of the hosting organization, the event would be permitted if registered as a ’tails event with Student Activities, which was the original goal of expanding SEMP to include ’tails events. Such events, however, are never registered. According to the Social Events Regulation section of SEMP, no open or closed registered event can start within twelve hours of the end of a different open or closed event. Ergo, the tremendously common back-to-back ’tails and open parties are not permitted by SEMP. A few minutes before the imaginary open party is set to start, all the bottles of hard alcohol and cans of Keystone Light are removed from the prying eyes of Safety and Security. One keg of beer is tapped and the open registered party has started. This hypothetical fraternity is careful never to tap more than one keg at a time, for this would be too obvious to Safety and Security to observe during one of their walk-throughs. Instead they sometimes try this little trick: after receiving the keg registration tags from the administration (let’s say five tags), the hosting organization will purchase eight kegs. These eight kegs are hidden from Safety and Security in some private part of the basement. When the first registered keg is empty, its tag will be transferred to one of the three excess kegs. This allows the hosting organization to serve more beer than the administration authorizes without detection. For attendees of a party who are not members of the hosting organization, obtaining a beer during an open party can be difficult. For hosting members it is a bit easier, but if this host wanted enough cups of beer to play a game of pong (between 14 and 30 cups depending on the variation) he would have to wait for a very long time. People with the requisite patience are rare. As one might expect, the hypothetical fraternity has devised a way of getting around this problem. Brothers wishing to fill a new game of beer pong will retreat to a private part of the basement, probably the same place where extra kegs are stored, and fill enough cups from a source different from the single keg in the public part of the basement. The second source may be another keg or any number of cases of Keystone Light cans. This practice violates the single centralized location rule. It is unlikely that the SEMP policy will be altered anytime soon. This is mostly attributable to Dean Nelson’s interim status. With regards to alcohol policy, he hopes that his successor, as a permanent dean, will address the concerns. He has taken a similiar position on Committee on Standards reform. In short, concerning important changes that students want, the College is in limbo. Perhaps if Dean Nelson had another year, reform in both these areas would be feasible, but he does not have this time. Furthermore, students involved in alcohol policy report that administrators are largely wary of making policy chances. The impetus for change is rather small, despite some problems with the current policy. There is a lull in influential calls for change. Nevertheless, when former Middlebury president John McCardell addressed Greek leaders to recommend that the drinking age be lowered to eighteen, his message was, by one account, well-received by the administration. The key to understanding this behavior is to realize that Parkhurst and its vital organs do not care much about substance abuse as such; however, they live in constant fear of being sued. The College policy as it currently exists is designed to protect the College legally. Certainly, this affords students better access to medical resources, but the bottom line is always avoiding suits. The method, then, is to display a level of responibility to the state. Having a set of policies, procedures, and especially a paper trail are absolutely crucial to protecting the College from legal culpability. This explains the alcohol policy’s unusual features and why they tolerate a certain level of disingenuousness on the part of Greek houses: actually complying with the SEMP requirements is far less important than the appearance of compliance. For instance, the current policy allows just one keg to be tapped at a time. But it’s easy to register ‘on-the-fly,’ and an expected attendance of under eighty means that no Safety & Security walk-throughs will take place. The loopholes are quite wide, but as long as there is the appearance of rules-enforcement, the administration is content. If the College were ever asked by the State of New Hampshire to explain itself, it could always point to the keg tags that were signed, the formal processes they went through, the SEMP training that brothers were required to complete, the presence of sober monitors, the fact that officers didn’t see the alcohol source, the College’s professed staunch support of its own keg policy, and finally the mantra of “we want to ensure the healthy and safety of students.” Sustainability has largely been a buzzword around campus, signifying little. But Coed-Fraternity-Sorority (CFS) administration is beginning to take it seriously. One fraternity was fined for a sustainability violation (the presence of trash), and another failed to pass its inspection due to litter around the perimeter of its physical plant: its punishment was to produce a certain amount of recycled material. This policy—the “clean grounds policy”—is not well known except among a few Greek leaders. Measures such as these may become more frequent. The CFS administration has hired an sustainability intern. Sororities, as expected, are much more gung-ho about implementing the sustainability policies to which they’ve agreed. Fraternities sometimes agree but, when they do, rarely follow through. New recycling bins in fraternity basements often contain everything imaginable except recyclable goods. Part of this is attributable to the fact that national sororities are dry and therefore rarely host parties, which produce waste in large quantities. Some have used sustainability as an argument for an improved keg policy. Cans of beer require cups for filling and produce more litter, whereas a keg yields only cups and no cans. When Greek leaders make this argument, however, they are not convincing, for the reason that they have not adhered to previous promises of sustainable behavior. Greek leaders told The Dartmouth Review that administrators often won’t acknowledge that students have valid points about reform. Reform advocates are a fairly small portion of campus: mostly, they are fraternity leaders, though the policy technically applies to other organizations, such as athletic teams and local sororities. The current situation is not awful, just very strange. Before the SEMP reforms in 2005, policy oscillated between “no kegs allowed” and “kegs will not be regulated.” The current situation is therefore something of a compromise. The College will never budge on walk-throughs (and why would they?), but allowing more than one source of beer at a party is a modest, reasonable goal. |
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